


paint the blood and hang the palms

by ohmcgee



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Demons, M/M, Murder Husbands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-15 02:40:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5768212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmcgee/pseuds/ohmcgee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He always comes back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	paint the blood and hang the palms

"He's not dead," Tim says and Dick thinks they've been here before, only --

Only Conner wasn't actually dead. 

Only Bruce didn't get shot in the heart. 

"He's not dead," Tim says again as they lower the casket into the ground, stands there with his arms stiff by his sides as dirt is being shoveled on top of it. He stands there until it starts to rain, the fresh dirt on top of Jason's grave turning to mud. 

He stands there until Dick comes and drags him back inside the manor.

 

: : :

 

"Tim, I'm worried."

"I'm not," Tim says to Dick a week and three days later, tapping away at his laptop with his glasses falling down the bridge of his nose, running a scan of an ancient codex through a translating program on his computer. "He comes back."

"What?" Dick asks and when Tim looks at him he's got that same horrified look on his face, the same as Bruce, same as Alfred. He wonders if they’re still upset about Jason dying. Honestly, they should know better by now. "Tim --"

"He always comes back," Tim says, pushing his glasses back up his nose and swiveling back around in his chair to face his computer. "I'm not worried."

 

: : :

 

"We were just starting to get along," Tim says, sitting cross-legged in the grass in front of Jason's gravestone. "I was thinking about kissing you the night you had to go and get shot. Way to ruin the moment, by the way."

He checks his watch. 

"You were gone twelve hundred and forty-three days last time," he says and reaches out, traces the letters of Jason's name with his finger. "I can't wait that long again."

 

: : : 

 

Tim summons the demon with the blood of the innocent smeared across his forehead, offers his sacrifice and servitude, and in return the demon gives him what he wants. 

For a price. 

 

: : : 

 

"What did you do?" Jason asks, his hands tight around Tim's throat, thumbs digging into Tim’s trachea, cutting off his air supply. "What the fuck did you _do_ to me?"

"What?" Tim asks, rubbing the bruises around his neck when Jason finally backs off. "You thought you could just leave me to deal with Damian on my own?"

"I'm a monster," Jason says, staring at his own hands.

Tim rolls his eyes. "You always were such a drama queen."

 

: : :

 

“So you’re a demon,” Tim says while he makes them each a turkey sandwich. He picked up chips for Jason before he went to the cemetery earlier, remembered he liked a crunch with his sandwich. “How is that different than before?”

“Ha fucking ha,” Jason says and flips him off, reaching over to steal a chip out of the bag. “Oh shit, are those Salt and Vinegar?”

“Your favorite,” Tim smiles. 

He waits until after they digest their food to tell Jason that he’s not the only one who lost a soul out of the deal.

“Well shit,” Jason shrugs, kicking his feet up on the coffee table. “What do we do now?”

“Wanna catch up on The Walking Dead?” Tim says, picking up the remote. “I tivo’d them for you.”

“Hell yes,” Jason says. “Glenn better not be fucking dead.”

For some reason, they both find that fucking _hilarious._

 

: : :

 

The first time Tim kisses him he tastes someone else’s blood on Jason’s mouth and ash in the back of his throat. The first time he fucks him Jason breaks two of his ribs. 

The first time time Tim kills someone, Jason buys him an ice cream cone.

“You did good,” Jason says, wiping a smear of blood off of Tim’s cheek. “But you’re kinda messy about it.”

Tim snorts and points at Jason’s shirt, at the gross mixture of melted neapolitan ice cream dripping down his chin. “Like you?”

“You know me,” Jason says with a wink. “I’m sloppy when I eat.”

After they finish their food, Jason kills every person in the restaurant so he can bend Tim over their table and fuck his tongue inside of him until Tim screams for him. He fucks Tim up against the freezer case of ice cream and they destroy every piece of furniture in the diner. Tim comes so many times he loses count, until he has to bite Jason so hard he draws blood just to get him to stop. 

“I have to give it to you,” Tim says on the walk home, buying a newspaper from a street vendor as they pass by. “That was a pretty awesome date.”

“Hard to top resurrection and soul-selling, babe.” Jason says, throwing his arm around him. 

“True,” Tim says, frowning at the score of the latest Knights game. “I did set the bar incredibly high.”

“You’re an overachiever,” Jason says. “You can’t help it.”

“Speaking of,” Tim says. “It’s your turn in Words With Friends.”

“Ugh,” Jason says, ignoring Tim’s smug chuckling.

 

: : : 

 

“You have to watch this,” Jason says in bed later, rolling over to stick his phone in Tim’s face.

It’s a video called Cats Vs Cucumbers in which cats, apparently, are inexplicably freaked out by cucumbers. Also Jason laughs so hard he falls off the fucking bed. They’ve got a high bed. It’s a pretty big drop.

“I kind of love you,” Tim says, hanging off the edge of the bed to peer down at Jason, red in the face and still clutching his belly from laughing so hard.

“Fucking _cucumbers_ ,” Jason says hysterically, and Tim rolls over and goes back to his newspaper.

 

: : :

 

“I love you too,” Jason says over pancakes the next morning. Or what Jason thinks are meant to be pancakes and taste, actually, like salty rubber and have a strange _sheen_ to them. “But please. Never, ever try to fucking cook in my kitchen again.”

“Fine, you do the cooking,” Tim says frowning at his stack of abominations before dumping them in the trash. “I’ll do the dismembering.”

“Deal,” Jason says and kisses him on the cheek on his way to the fridge. “Pick up some kale on the way back from your thing.”

Tim scrunches up his nose. “Do people without souls eat kale?”

Jason thumps him in the nose. “These two do. Now go or you’ll miss him and you’ll have to track his sorry ass down and you’ll be late for dinner.”

“Yes dear,” Tim says, rolling his eyes as he grabs his coat and opens the door.

 

: : :

 

“Please,” the man pleads, tears in his eyes. He’s not a good man, the sort that likes to hang around playgrounds and parks but never gets caught at it, but he’s begging for his life like he’s a saint, like he should be spared for some reason. “Please, I’ve got-- I’ve got a wife. She -- she asked me to pick up milk before I came home. She’ll --”

“Shit,” Tim says and looks at his watch. The supermarket closes in ten minutes. “I’d really love to take my time with this,” he says and breaks the guy’s neck with a clean, sharp twist of his hands. “But apparently I eat kale now.”

 

: : :

 

They eat Jason’s vegetarian lasagna together on the couch, Tim with his feet in Jason’s lap and a glass of wine in one hand. Tim’s trying to figure out what’s happening on Desperate Housewives while Jason bitches and cusses about not being able to get past level ten billion in Candy Crush. 

He’s wearing one of Tim’s worn in hoodies and a pair of his own sweats and Tim looks around at their place, the paperbacks littering every surface, all the spices in the cabinet that Tim never knew existed, and he puts down his wine and climbs into Jason’s lap, wraps his arms around his neck and kisses Jason’s mouth hard enough that he tastes blood on his tongue when he pulls away.

“Promise me you won’t leave again,” he says, digging his nails into the nape of Jason’s neck. “ _Promise._ ”

“Come on,” Jason says, gripping Tim’s ass as he stands up, wrapping Tim’s legs around him as he carries him to their bed. “You know me. I always come back.”

**Author's Note:**

> [cats vs cucumbers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSj3uIEHRk8)


End file.
